GOP Congressman: ‘People Who Lead Good Lives’ Don’t Have Pre-Existing Conditions

Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks claims “people who lead good lives” don’t have pre-existing conditions, and people without pre-existing conditions have “done things the right way.”

Brooks made his ridiculous and insulting claims during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper earlier this week. At the time Brooks told Tapper:

My understanding is that (the new proposal) will allow insurance companies to require people who have higher healthcare costs to contribute more to the insurance pool. That helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy. And right now, those are the people — who’ve done things the right way — that are seeing their costs skyrocketing.

In essence, Congressman Brooks is arguing sick people don’t deserve affordable healthcare because “people who lead good lives” don’t have pre-existing conditions; and if you do have a pre-existing condition, you probably deserve it because you have not been living a “good” life.

In addition, Brooks believes healthy people should not be responsible for sick people because people without pre-existing conditions have “done things the right way.”

… this pernicious and prevalent form of sympathetic magic is most at work in the belief systems of people who’ve ingested certain kinds of institutional religion… These religions tell people that there’s an all-knowing, judgmental deity watching over us and getting ready to sort us into behavior-appropriate afterlives; that things happen to us for a reason; and that there’s a definite link between how moral/faithful you are and what you deserve. And let’s not forget the persistent sex-negativity found in such religions, either.

Jorgenson does a nice job of giving a scholarly account of Brooks’s deeply flawed reasoning. Yet the real world consequences of such erroneous critical thinking will have tragic, even fatal results.

Even more alarming, Brooks is apparently not alone in his critical thinking failure. In fact, Brooks’s disdain for those with pre-existing conditions is reflected in the new GOP healthcare reform bill passed earlier this week.

The new Trumpcare legislation will allow insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, including rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, PTSD, and a whole host of other pre-existing conditions.

In short, under Trumpcare insurance companies will be allowed to discriminate against customers who have pre-existing conditions, and will be allowed to refuse payment for problems stemming from them.

Bottom line: Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks is mean, stupid, and cruel. Yet Republicans love him, and it looks like he will soon be making a run for the U.S. Senate.